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30 November 2014

I have found that appreciation of phenomena like the erosive force of flowing water, the mechanics of an avalanche, the phases of the moon, or the life cycle of a mayfly, invariably leads to a vast infinity of all that's poetic.

The truth is, that those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded.
— Herbert Spencer, 1889

Thinking about the Castaneda books we read in the 1970s. We were a generation of introspective daydreamers. We were full of hope and open to discover profundities that were routinely ignored or blithely overlooked.

“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan﻿

What happened on our watch?

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
― Martin Luther King

How did we allow ourselves and our children to be ruled by hate-filled bean counters?

We were naively inattentive to the seductive force of greed. We were willfully ignorant of the darker, self-serving aspects of human nature.

We assumed the common good was our purpose and that its emergence was inevitable.

We assumed King's moral universe, the arc of civilization, bends toward justice rather than tribal oppression.